The President said: "Hello. Sorry to wake you. I need the services of that person ... it is a grave crisis ... If you come down to see me then I will explain more fully ... Yes, I must see you in person ... and bring him, please. I want to talk to him ... Well, then tell him to stand by for immediate service . .. All right. Fine. Yes. That would be fine for now. Yes, I understand, it's just an alert. Not a commitment. You will put him on alert. Thank you. You don't know how desperately the world needs him now."

CHAPTER TWO

His name was Remo.

He had just laced the skin-tight black cotton uniform around his legs, when the telephone rang in his room in the Hotel Nacional in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

He picked up the receiver with his left hand while finishing the cork-blackening of his face with his right. The telephone operator told him there had just been a long distance call from the Firmifex Company in Sausali-to, California. The woman at Firmifex said that the shipment of durable goods would be arriving in two days.

"Yeah, okay." He hung up and said one word: "Idiots."

He turned off the lights and the room was dark. Through the open window, the sea breezes blew off the Caribbean, not cooling Puerto Rico but swirling away and redistributing some of the autumn heat. He walked out onto the open balcony with its round aluminium tube railing supported by curved metal spokes.

He was about six feet tall and the only hint of muscle was a slight thickness around the neck, wrists and ankles, but he hopped the railing to the ledge as though it were a horizontal matchstick.

He leaned into the sea slick brick wall of the Hotel Nacional, swelling its salty wetness, and feeling the cool of the ledge at his feet. The bricks were white but they appeared gray close up in the early morning darkness.